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O’Nan has written a wonderfully intimate and gently absorbing book. It inhabits an era and a fine mind with great care, folding in details of Fitzgerald’s life with subtle, unhurried sympathy. The result is a portrait of grace under pressure, of a kind of moral courage very different to the macho antics of the writer’s great rival, Hemingway. Great title too.

Choose a holiday read to match your destination. From Cornwall to Hollywood, top authors tell Hannah Stephenson about the places that inspired their novels, and why readers should pay them a visit.

If you’re… Heading to Hollywood:

The last three years of American writer F Scott Fitzgerald’s life, often obscured by the legend of his earlier Jazz Age glamour, are the focus of Stewart O’Nan’s heartfelt new novel.

“While most of F Scott Fitzgerald’s Hollywood haunts are long gone, Musso & Frank’s restaurant has survived intact, the decor seemingly untouched since he and Sheilah Graham [Fitzgerald’s partner] ate there. Waiters in the same red vests from the thirties bustle between tables, delivering huge bloody steaks and knockout cocktails. Just up the street on Hollywood Boulevard, the Egyptian Theater, where Fitzgerald’s Three Comrades debuted, still hosts gala premieres, and the Roosevelt Hotel, further up the boulevard, is where the stars still go for the after-party.”

Stewart O’Nan is undoubtedly one of the bestselling authors you’ve never heard of. He started writing professionally with his wife’s encouragement after leaving his career as a Grumman Aerospace test engineer to pursue his real passion. Over the past two decades he has given us 15 splendidly dynamic novels. He’s an author who writes easily without an ounce of pretension; a man who writes about the people nobody else is writing about. For instance, his book “Last Night at the Lobster,” a spare, nearly perfect novel in which there are no unexpected plot twists, and no overarching political themes, revolves around the manager of a doomed Red Lobster restaurant during its last night of operation. (O’Nan cites his major influences as Stephen King and Flannery O’Connor, two names you’re not likely to hear linked again any time soon, but make perfect sense when you read his work.)